Grand Prix 10: Resolution Half Marathon 4th March 2012

It seems that the bad weather brings out the best of runs from 26.2 RRC. While others stay indoors 26.2 take on the challenge and this weekend saw some notable successes.

While John Matthews battled the wind and torrential rain over the South Downs to finish 8th (out of 260) at the Steyning Stinger Half, Ann Bath took on the challenge of the 100 mile Centurion TP100 to finish in an amazing 26 hours 55 minutes before the race was abandoned due to the conditions, Joe Chang won the Maidenhead Bunny Fun run and Jack Holland came home in first place in the Resolution Half in Richmond Park (out of 337 finishers).

The Resolution Half was the replacement Club Championship for the Watford Half Marathon following its cancellation during the snows of February. It seems that the weather gods don’t like our Championship Half Marathons as the snow was replaced with wind and cold driving rain.

The Resolution Half was chosen as the replacement Half marathon as it was local and in the lovely Richmond Park, advertised as Chip timed and supported a worthy charity at a reasonable cost. However, it was the first time of running and I will be honest in that I was disappointed with some of the issues that took the some of the shine off our Championship event. These included the staggered start (although most of our runners started in a couple of groups together), an over distance course (13.3 miles by my garmin) and some very laid back marshalling around the several of the potentially high risk road crossings (not the one manned by our own Karen Hardy however). Also, the new style disposable chip timing seemed to be unreliable as some times bore no resemblance to reality as my time was inexplicably recorded as some 20 minutes slower. To cap it all, when the results were published only runners’ numbers were noted – no names ! This made the collation of the results for the Grand Prix rather challenging. Consequently, if you ran and I have not included you in the results below, please email me (ajpengelly [ at ] hotmail.co [ dot ] uk) and I will include you. Therefore, the results should be considered provisional for now.

My race report follows:

I was planning on cycling over to the park and spectate so was sitting having a full English breakfast when Richard Goulder called me at 9:00 on the morning to ask if I wanted to run with his number as he had a tight calf, so I quickly got my kit together drove over and picked up the number and found myself at the start within the hour. So having been out injured with no running for 8 months since the Boston Marathon last April, and my recovery consisting of half a dozen parkruns and a couple of 7 mile training runs I was at the start of a half marathon. Hardly good preparation.

However, once at the start I met up with Mike Gray, Libby Marchant and Alice Tozer who I started with. Having run a half marathon in the low 1:30’s last month, Alice flew off as if she had a plane to catch (which it turns out she had) and that was the last we saw of her. It was good running with Mike and Libby as they kept me at a steady 9:00 min mile pace for the first five miles and we chatted easily. Thanks guys. I then went ahead, progressively increasing the pace mile by mile and was encouraged by marshall Karen Hardy and Zoe Ashcroft who was on a long training run going the other way around. On my second lap Jack Holland ran effortlessly past me going at 6:00 min/mile pace, but still had time and breath to offer words of encouragement to this old 26.2 runner which really helped me on my way. I was pleased to hear that Jack went on to record the overall winning time for the over distance course of 1:21:00 and taking the Club Championship honours in the Senior Men’s category.

In the last few miles, I spied the club vests of Derick Wilkie and Marie Cenalmor up ahead which pulled me along and had the briefest of words with them both before being politely encouraged to head on to the finish. They were both running well given they had raced in Barcelona and Brighton Halves only a couple of weeks previously so well done both of you for sticking to the tough task in hand. Maria takes her first Club trophy as being the winner of the Ladies Vet category.

After what was my slowest half marathon ever; although not surprising given the absence of any real training, I was encouraged over the line, by Pete Tozer, who was bearing the brunt of the wind and rain as a hardy spectator and he brought me up to speed that Alice had run a good time of 1:38:28 (Senior Ladies Champion) and Greg Whiteman had run strongly to finish in 1:44:07 and that Simon Gerrard had run 1:40:30 in his first Half Marathon to take the Mens Vet Category trophy. The ever smiling Libby then finished in a good time of 1:58:12 shortly followed by Mike Gray had kept to his pace and finished in 2:00:51 to win the Men’s Senior Vet category. Well done Mike.

I later saw Linda Grossman give her all to finish in a very respectable time of 1:55:39 before collapsing on her back shortly afterwards.

It was a tough run, not helped by the conditions or the problems offered by the rather basic organisation but I must confess that I did enjoy the run out. However, it was a lesson learned in event selection and I can’t say that I would run an event organised by the Stroke Association again. Well done to all of you that ran on Sunday – wherever that might have been – and thank you to those that came out to support or marshall in such poor weather conditions.

Enjoy your running

Pegs

The Grand Prix tables have been updated and can be found in the downloads section but are summarised below:

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